Weather system ideas

[kiwiak]

What are your ideas about hypotetical weather system immplentation?

Shoudl wether only be minor hindrance or create situations where launch woudl be impossible?

Woudl it add depth to game or just make it irritating?

[Luckless]

I would want at least 3 states for weather systems in a finished game.

None

Minor

Hard

Minor would be more cosmetic in nature. Maybe making in atmosphere flight a little more 'interesting' in a kerbal fashion. Hard should include dangerous hurricane scale events that could cause damage on launch or landing attempts, and maybe even cause damage to the space centre that then needs repaired.

[Specialist290]

Dropping this in Suggestions and Development Discussions, since it seems to be one of the latter

[S4qFBxkFFg]

There are plenty of ways this could make the game more interesting:

crosswind runway landings

cloud cover necessitating radio beacons or a satellite navigation system

sandstorms on Duna, or in Kerbin's deserts

if you leave SRBs on the pad during freezing weather, they could do a "Challenger"

cloud cover reducing solar panel effectiveness

wind increasing radiator effectiveness

[nholzric]

Weather sounds to me like a good idea until I think about playing with (around) it; then it sounds really obnoxious. In fact, I'm not even sure I'd want weather as a visual effect; I'd rather concentrate on flying.

[JumpsterG]

Love/hate. Torn between the design challenges and spectacles it would create (Good) and the frustration it could cause (Bad).

If implemented, I'd vote for it to be predictable, so you could properly plan around the weather conditions, but the very notion of predicting the weather would maybe defeat the purpose?

Weather systems of varying severity that generate and move across Kerbin's surface could be monitored from map view and be about as predictable as RL weather systems. If these were procedural in nature (KSC on Year 2, Day 22 always encounters a storm, for example), they would be further predictable and missions shared by the community would be viable, since launching the same mission at the same date/time would still produce the same outcome.

The actual effects of a weather system would have to be broken down into individual features to be considered with their up and downsides.

-Precipitation (Cosmetic?)

-High/Low Pressure patterns (IRL how significant are these to aircraft and rockets?)

-Wind (1-directional force applied to physics objects in the area of weather)

-Cloud cover (solar panel interferance)

-Heat/Cold (Not sure? Would not be cool to land at the poles just to have fuel freeze/blow up or something...)

-Lightning (Please no!)

I have no idea if this would make the game better or worse, but it's fun to consider.

Edited December 20, 2013 by JumpsterG

[kiwiak]

I thought about it a little.

I think that weather on Kerbin shoudl be only moderate challange and of course add visual variety to the planet. Just wind force applied on rocket that pushes it little off course, nothing SAS cant handle. In carrer mode, weather shoudl be perfect untl some REAL PLAYING TIME passes by (because players can just warp few years on lunchpad doing nothing), to avoid confusing new players.

Another planets are different thing though. There, players shoudl meet challenges. Strong winds that blow landers off course crashing it to the surface, maybe some toxic rains that melt hulls. Lighting that might strike vessel if we travel trough clouds. Zones of temperature so high that it overheats engines. Avoiding these, woudl require chosing landing site with acceptable weather. Due to random weather patterns, each time player woudl have to land somewhere else. Mehanism similar to ISA Mapsat, for scanning planet weather coudl be implemented.

Well, i wgot a feeling wewill have to wait for stock weather system for veery long time. Somebody shoudl just make a mod!

Edited December 21, 2013 by kiwiak